HOW TO MAKE BOOKPLATES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 4 (Supplement)

HOW TO MAKE BOOKPLATES.

A FASCINATING PASTIME,

ARTICLE I. From earliest times booklovers have lamented tlie easy loss of books, and the seeming lack of care, memory or scruples of tlie ready borrower. Thus it came about that many hundreds of years ago bookplates were invented. The first English one known dates from 1500.

A bookplate could be defined as "a label that is affixed to the inside of a book to denote its ownership." It should also enhance the appearance of the book, and therefore could be more accurately defined as a decorative label."

Commencing this week it is our intention to conduct a short series of articles on the subject of bookplates, and how best to go about making them. Suggested designs will be ojven each week, but these are intended only as ideas. Originality in design makes one's bookplate most distinctive.

Before vour bookplate can even be commenced the contents must be decided upon. After tliis the design and the suitable arrangement of these contents may come under consideration. The contents of a book plate are of two kinds—literary and pictorial. In the first instance these primarily consist of the name, which may instead take the form of initials or "monogram. If the chief object of a bookplate is to be considered,

however (i.e., a distinguishing mark of possession), the name is to be preferred. Usually words expressing proprietorship are included. "Kx Libris" has been used so often for this that it now serves as an equivalent name for a bookplate.

"From rav library" or "Out of my library." "From the library of" (the name following this latter arrangement) is used, or more shortly "his (her) book" succeeding the name.

School libraries usually have bookplutes. The one shown in our first illustration gives space for the name of the student who presented the

book. Some school bookplates call for the inclusion of the form, and this can easily be done. The name of the school is, of course, always included.

The pictorial contents may be either pure decorations or they may be decorative symbols or imagery; the latter kind have particular possibilities. When the crest of a school or society is used this would provide enough pictorial material in itself.

One more point has to be considered in the selection of a design, and that is that fitness or suitability must always be the first consideration.

It is useless to draw or to select a design large and elaborate, if your shelves are" mainly lined with school editions; and it is absurd to put an elaborately wrought and beautifully printed design into a library composed in the main of shilling reprints. Generally speaking it may be said that a bookplate should be fairly simple, rather small, and indicative in a modest and graceful way of the nature of the booklover and her books. Book labels conceived on these lines will suit the average reader's small library, which will probably include cheap and expensive volumes, novels, essays, poems, bound periodicals, technical works, works of art and works dealing with favourite pastimes.